The victory at Velmora was hollow.
Though the Emberless had retreated, the city's magic was scarred. Flames didn't light properly. Spellstones cracked. Children with mage-blood cried without reason.
Kael walked its streets, hand on hilt. "Something's wrong here."
"It's not just the city," Maev murmured. "It's Arien."
Arien sat alone in the ruined temple, staring into a bowl of water. She tried to summon the Crownflame.
Nothing.
Only ash.
That night, as the others slept, Arien dreamt again.
But this time, she did not see a burning world.
She saw herself.
Walking a throne of bones.
Crowned not in gold—but in embers.
Around her knelt an army with hollow eyes. Their voices whispered one word, over and over:
> "Ashir."
She awoke with fire in her throat.
Kael rushed in. "Arien—your eyes—"
They glowed black and gold, flickering between light and void.
She gasped, voice shaking. "I think he's inside me. I think… he's always been."
Maev entered behind him, holding a relic.
"This might help," she said. "It's an Echo Shard. It can pull truth from a soul."
Arien hesitated, then gripped it.
A flash—
And suddenly, they all saw it.
A child. Alone in fire. Crying. A cloaked figure reaches out—Ashir—offering warmth in the cold.
But the warmth was a trick.
A mark.
And Arien had carried it ever since.
She dropped the shard.
"I'm not me," she whispered. "I'm part… him."
Kael knelt beside her. "No. You're not what haunts you. You're what you fight."
"But what if I lose?"
"Then we fall with you. Not because we must. But because we choose to."
Outside, the skies grew d
arker.
Not with storm—but with absence.
Ashir was waking.
And now… he had a voice.